He was as dark as night and twice as fast.

She leads me up the stairs, glancing back every so often to make sure that I have kept up.

He was the epitome, the embodiment of all my fears combined into one apparition.

She glances back again, and gives me a weak smile before continuing.

He is the fear that which makes me cry over stress, the fear that makes my head and ears ache with an otherworldly grip.

My best friend in the entire universe grips my hand to steady the shaking.

He is the fear that leads me to believe I’ve lost everything, that unhinges me every time the memories enter the stage of my subconscious.

My best friend squeezes my hand harder as I numbly follow the lady onwards.

If I was afraid of water, he would have become water; if I was afraid of fear itself, he would have become the very picture of an abstract chemical process.

The walls that pass me are white, white with a purity that still confuses me.

It was not my fault.  It was not my fault.  I am not to blame.  It has nothing to do with me.  I am nothing.

The room is white, too, with a hospital bed in the very center.

I closed my eyes, because my girlish instinct still let me believe that if I closed my eyes, nothing was happening at all, that it was only a bad dream.

I sit on the hospital bed, with my hand sweating onto my best friend’s equally perspiring palm.

“I know it hurts.”  Did he mean physically, or mentally?

The lady washes her hands and exits the room.

“You can’t let it destroy you, and most of all, you can’t give in.”

The lady comes back.  She is ready.

“Everyone is making the same stupid mistakes!  How could all of humanity be so stupid, such idiots?!  We call ourselves technologically advanced, and it is undoubtable that you are killing. Murder, that’s what it is.  We have the scientific proof.  You are not just deactivating come computer, you are destroying your own flesh and blood!   Just think about what it would be like if that had happened to you.  You would not be here on this earth!  You would never love anyone, you would never make friends, have fun with family.  The next time you’re sad, just think about how amazing it is that you can be sad, how self-righteous you are to be depressed about your own feelings--and without retribution!  You are allowed to feel sorry for yourself, when humans are being murdered by the score, not without being excessively sad, but without being sad at all!  They are not allowed to be sad!” 

I had answered that with, “They are mistakes.” 

She had spat back, “And who’s to say you’re not just as  much a mistake as your child?” 

In my numb state, I had said, “Not my child.  His child.” 

She said, “But your responsibility.  God gave you the responsibility, and He wants to see that you treat the responsibility well.” 

I said, “God had nothing to do with this.  Evil.” 

She said,  “God didn’t cause it, but he always does make good of evil.  Don’t you agree?” 

I backed away, slowly.  “I need to destroy this evil inside me.”

“You know, there’s a reason why they call it ‘pro-life,’” she said. “Life means alive, living, breathing.  As I said before, science give us indisputable proof that they are alive, every single one of them.”

“You’re crazy,” I told her.

She said, “Next time you want to call me crazy, you should think about what it would have been like if I had decided to up and kill you before you were given the priveledge of loving and hurting.”

“Don’t do it,” she told me later.

My very best friend holds my hand as the doctor comes in and prepares for the abortion.  He washes his hands, puts on sterilized gloves, and approaches me.

In a burst of energy, I leave the doctor behind in the room, stunned and with a bleeding nose.  My friend sits, also stunned, and the nurse gazes around the room in bewilderment.  I run down the stairs, jumping down two at a time, leaning heavily on the rail to vault myself through door after door.  The place is like a jail cell, confining me until I reach the pavement outside, gasping for breath and weak-kneed.  My hands shake worse than ever as I sit down on the warm pavement, slowly leaning my head between my knees.  The cracks in the sidewalk are like a beautiful, delicate spiderweb, with ants crawling all around.

I gasp as tears make it to my eyes, and struggle to cry and breathe at the same time.  I lean my head back to stare up at the sky; the clouds move slowly, lazily, over an austere blue universe stretching above me.  I rub my hands up and down my body from my knees over my torso and back down as tears of joy rain over the pavement.  I’ve escaped.